


Scenes, Triptych

by Aris Merquoni (ArisTGD)



Category: Babylon 5
Genre: Alternate Universe, Bisexual Character, Canon Queer Character, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-04-08
Updated: 2008-04-08
Packaged: 2017-10-07 01:01:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/59667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArisTGD/pseuds/Aris%20Merquoni
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Interconnected scenes from an alternate possibility. Initially written as commentfic, short pieces, and a Five Things for <a href="http://leyenn.livejournal.com/profile"><img/></a><a href="http://leyenn.livejournal.com/"><b>leyenn</b></a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Scenes, Triptych

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Leyenn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leyenn/gifts).



Lyta sent the probe. Talia moaned, clutched at her head, then collapsed into Garibaldi's arms, going limp.

John pushed Lyta aside, stepped over to her, Susan at his heels. "She's gone cold," Michael said.

John looked back at Lyta, who was still staring in disbelief. "Is that supposed to happen?"

"No," she said, shaking her head. "I thought..."

"Franklin to Medlab," Stephen was saying. "I need a trauma team in the captain's office, stat."

John watched as Susan reached out to cradle Talia's face in her hand. He watched her other hand clench into a fist and press into her leg.

* * *

"She was in my quarters," Susan said as they watched Talia breathe shallowly, under harsh Medlab lights.

John looked at her. She was staring straight ahead. "When she tried to kill Lyta, I mean," she continued. "If I hadn't left her alone..."

"We might not have found out," he said, as gently as he could.

She closed her eyes and made a small, strangled sound, almost like a sob.

* * *

He had to admit, at first he was watching her because Susan was watching her. But there was something of a mystery in the calmness of her breath, the gentle fluttering of her eyes, never quite opening.

Susan spent every spare minute she had in Medlab. Most of the time she watched Talia. Sometimes she watched him watch Talia, and he only caught that in reflections, because she always looked away before he could catch her eyes.

They didn't have many spare minutes, either of them.

"We've heard rumors that the Centauri are using mass drivers," she told him. Her voice was raw. "I can't believe they'd resort to planetary bombardment."

"Right now I'd believe just about anything," he said.

When there was finally a lull, they were back in Medlab, ignoring the chaos around them.

"God, this is hard, John," she said, finally meeting his eyes.

"I know."

"I trusted her..." her fingers laced and clenched, tightly, as she looked down at Talia's serene face. "It's the first time I've trusted anyone since..."

When she didn't finish, he asked gently, "Since your brother died?"

She looked up, lips pressed into a thin line. "Since you."

He stared. Swallowed, barely. "Oh."

"Oh, just kiss already." A soft voice, harsh with disuse. Talia's voice.

He looked down, startled. She was smirking at them, eyes still narrowed against the light. Susan's breath caught. Talia looked up at her, stroked the side of her face. "Don't worry," she said. "It's still me. I won."

Susan took her hand in both of hers, and the look on her face made something painful and jealous curl up in John's stomach. Talia smiled at her, then looked up at him and said, "Don't worry, captain. I won't steal her away from you. But you're going to have to learn to share."

Startled, he looked at Susan, who looked just as surprised. "I'm not," he said, "We're not..."

"Trust me, captain," Talia said, closing her eyes again. "You'll thank me later."

* * *

Bombs were falling on distant worlds. The corridors were quiet with the peace of the gun. John helped Susan support Talia on the way back to her quarters.

He stopped at her door. Talia gave him a reproachful look, but let Susan take her inside.

He woke later that night when someone slid open the doors to his bedroom.

"What--" he asked, stopped by fingers on his mouth, then lips.

"Let myself in," Susan said when they parted. "You should change your lock code more often."

"Susan, I thought--"

"She's right. I do want this." Her hand slid down his neck, to the buttons on the front of his nightshirt. She took a deep breath, then caught, held his eyes. "So do you."

His tongue was thicker than normal. "Susan, we can't."

"I know." She swallowed. "I know we're breaking the rules. But I've gotten used to that, out here."

When he didn't say anything, she shuddered a sigh and said, "Please don't ask me to go."

"I don't want you to go," he said. He reached up, took her hand. "I don't want to share you."

She leaned forward, kissed him again. "Don't worry," she whispered, as he reached up with his other arm to hold her. "You won't lose me."

* * *

Talia took his hand as they walked. The Zocalo was busy again. The press of bodies all around.

"The Centauri are not content just to consolidate their gains!" G'Kar was shouting to the crowd. "They will move again, and they will move against you!"

He stopped to listen. Talia tilted her head back to study the narn, fingers tightening around his.

"Do not believe their hunger for territory is satiated with our worlds! Do not believe their lust for power has been slaked with our conquest! Their armies are restless, and they will not be bought by treaties and pretty words!"

"He's desperate," she murmured.

"His world just got destroyed," John said. "He deserves a little desperation."

She tugged, and he followed.

"I don't know if I can do this," he admitted. "This thing, with you and Susan. It's bad enough that it's breaking regs, but..."

She smiled back at him. "I keep telling you not to worry."

"But what if we start fighting?"

"We haven't started yet, have we?"

"I just don't want Susan to get hurt."

They reached the transport tube. It closed, sealing them inside, and she turned and smiled at him. "Susan's strong," she said. "And we both care about her. As long as we remember that, it'll work out."

* * *

He stumbled home, after Kosh left him in the garden, to find Talia there, eyes wide. "I saw..." she said. "I saw an angel..."

Susan came in, several hours later, slipped between them wordlessly. He tried to apologize, but she just kissed his shoulder and pulled him close.

* * *

The black, spidery thing turned, and spotted them.

John was just about to give the order for evasive maneuvers when Talia stepped forward, and stretched out her hand. And all of a sudden the ship... stopped, and hung there, against the green-gold-black of the stars, screaming in rage, straining against nothing.

John couldn't help but stare, then snapped, "Forward guns, full power!"

Susan's hand stabbed the controls and a beam of light stabbed the heart of the black ship. Delenn clutched the railing until her knuckles turned white, but after an agonizing wait that seemed to take minutes, the Shadow ship splintered, falling apart, withering and burning.

Talia stumbled, and he only reached her first because Susan had to get around the console. "Talia, that..." he said. "How did you do that?"

She curled into Susan's arms and shook her head. "I don't know. I just... saw it."

Susan had her arms around Talia's shoulders, a triumphant smile on her face. John grinned at them, then went back to the captain's chair. "Come on, we have a blockade to finish dismantling."

Marcus watched all of them from conn, smiling a bit as he finally understood. Talia leaned against the console railing, eyes closed, humming with the engines of the ship.

* * *

"You have to know it's a trap."

He straightened his uniform, slid his extra PPG into his ankle holster. "I know."

Talia crossed her arms and watched him, then sighed. "Susan's never going to forgive you if you go with her."

"I know." He sighed. "I have to, though. I might be able to end this war before it gets any worse."

"I think I understand."

He put his hands on her shoulders. "Take care of her?"

A sad smile. "You don't have to ask."

Susan didn't come to see him off. As the White Star pulled away from Babylon 5, he watched the stars slide by and promised, _I'll come back, Susan. If I have to claw my way back from hell, I'll come back._

The vortex opened ahead of them, and he, Anna, and the White Star dove forward into darkness.

* * *

##### Five places Susan, Talia and Sheridan had (together) sex but probably shouldn't have.

5\. Talia leaned into Susan's arms and stared out at the stars, the dark mass of Epsilon 3 hanging before them. "You're right," she said. "It's lovely here when nobody else is around."

John nodded. "Yeah, it's something I picked up accidentally. The ops dome goes on standby for one full shift every night and it's just... peaceful."

"Jeff used to come in here and turn his link off for some peace and quiet," Susan said.

Talia raised her eyebrows, looked around the darkened room. "How long is one full shift, again?"

* * *

4\. Having sex in a shower is romantic. Having sex with two other people in a shower stall can be hazardous to one's health.

"Those imprints are never going away," John muttered into his pillow as Susan rubbed hand cream into the two shower-control-handle-shaped dimples on his back.

"Awwww," Talia said unsympathetically.

Susan's hands stilled, and then one left his back. He craned his neck just far enough to see them kissing, then put his face back in the pillow and groaned.

* * *

3\. Sleeping quarters on the White Star were Minbari-style barracks, two long rows of diagonal beds, like shark teeth. John wandered back to the space between the two last beds on the right, looked down, and said, "Someone's going to walk in and see you two."

"What, like you?" Susan said, before grabbing his hands and pulling him down on top of them.

* * *

2\. "And this used to be my cabin," John said, finishing the roundabout tour of the Agamemnon.

Talia raised an eyebrow. "How big is it inside?"

"Oh, closet-sized. It's a warship, not a space station."

Susan grinned. "Can we take a look?"

John coughed. "That's infringing on Captain James' privacy."

"He was your second-in-command, right? I'm sure he infringed on your privacy a couple times," Susan said. "I sure did." With that, she pulled a very non-regulation keypass-cracking tool out of her pocket and slid it along the identicard slot.

"Susan," he complained as he followed her inside. "Bad enough--"

He didn't get more than a quick look around at his surroundings before Talia pushed him to the floor.

* * *

1\. Watching her breathing was the hardest part. Strapped to the table, wires and tubes and braces covering her, Susan's breathing was weak, hesitant, frail.

Talia held her hand gently, eyes half-lidded.

Susan's eyes finally opened, and she took them both in. "John?" she whispered. "Talia?"

"We're here," he said.

The hand in Talia's moved, squeezed Talia's fingers. Talia put her cheek to Susan's wrist, then brushed her lips over the back of her hand. With her other hand, gently, insistently, she reached for the back of John's neck, pulled him forward into a kiss. She never let go of Susan's hand.

* * *

"Are you okay?" Talia said, voice low.

Susan sighed and heaved herself out from her wheelchair into the chair next to her table--useless effort, probably, and her arms were shaking, but she wanted to make the point. "Stephen says I'll be doing physio for at least a year, and he's not sure if these twitches are ever going away, so I'm grounded. _Nichevo_."

Talia stared at her as she fumbled for the bottle in the bag tucked over the wheelchair's handle. "So..."

Susan would have liked to slam the vodka down on the table, but didn't really have the strength for it. "So I can't believe I never taught you and John how to drink properly."

As though he'd been summoned, the door to her quarters swung open and he stepped inside, blinked at the bottle on the table. "Sorry, I, uh... where did you get that?"

"Secret," she said. "You, get glasses."

He exchanged a glance with Talia before nodding, stripped out of his jacket on the way. As he lined the three glasses up on the table Susan muttered, "Hate the beard, still."

"I'll shave it off tomorrow," he said.

"You keep saying that." She pulled the stopper out and poured them each a couple fingers. "To," she said carefully when she'd gotten her hand around her glass, "the Interstellar Alliance, its president," she nodded at John, "and the mess of politics we now find ourselves in."

"Hear hear," Talia said over the clinking.

Susan swallowed the entire glass in one go, sighing as she set it down on the table. John and Talia stared at her briefly, then tipped their glasses back to try and follow her example.

Their expressions were the funniest things she'd seen in years. The laughter hurt, but she couldn't stop as John kept coughing and rubbing at first his mouth, then his eyes. Talia grimaced and said, "Woo, okay, that'll be enough for me," and went to fill her glass with water.

"The war's over," Susan said, and it was hysterical. "And there's nothing to do but drink vodka."

"Yeah," said John, voice rough. "But you'll always have us to drink it with."

* * *

"You know, you should talk with your trainers," Susan said as she sipped tea with Delenn, mid-afternoon light slanting through the Tuzanor towers to splash pastels around the pavilion. "They sent another trainee into my office to get chewed up and spat out."

Delenn chuckled. "I hope you were not too hard on him."

"This one I gave cookies. He reminded me too much of Corwin." She smirked and took another sip of tea, then turned to look as a clear set of footsteps started growing louder along the path.

"There you are," Talia said as she stepped into view. "Sorry to interrupt."

"Not at all," Delenn said, standing. Susan scooted her wheelchair back from the table, tilted her head back to meet Talia's kiss. "How are you, Talia?"

"Well," she replied, smiling. "Susan, John wanted to let you know that the test flight is definitely on this afternoon. He says he'll meet you up at the station whenever you're ready."

"Whenever I feel like getting strapped into my flight suit, he means. Ha. I'll see if they have a bar where we can wait until they actually need me." Her grin belied her complaints. "Great! I'll need to let Derek know so he can cover my paperwork."

Delenn smiled, bowed slightly. "I'll see you when you get back."

"Count on it." Susan touched a control on her chair's arm, reached up for Talia's hand. "Shall we?"

Delenn watched them go, nodded briefly to the acolyte who came to collect the tea. She wondered if Susan saw how brightly she shone, how far she'd come since the darkness after the war with Earth.

After a moment, she shook her head at her own foolishness. Of course Susan knew. If she had any doubts, all she had to do was look at her reflection in John and Talia's eyes.


End file.
